FAQs Archives - Page 3 of 15 - Richard M. Langworth

Irving Berlin, Isaiah Berlin: Churchill’s Mistaken Identity

20 November 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Enthralled by his accounts of American politics from the British Embassy in Washington, Churchill invited a "Mr. I. Berlin" to lunch. The invitee turned out to be Irving Berlin, not Isaiah, which produced a confusing dialogue around the table. ("Tell me, Mr. Berlin, what is your greatest work?" ... "White Christmas.") Later, meeting the real Isaiah Berlin, WSC acknowledged "the grave solipsism I was so unfortunate to have perpetrated."

Read More Read More

Churchill’s Shakespeare: Quoting “Romeo and Juliet”

15 November 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Darrell Holley offers one citation from "Romeo and Juliet." In his biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Winston writes: “Would he, under the many riddles the future had reserved for such as he, snapped the tie of sentiment that bound him to his party, resolved at last to ‘shake the yoke of inauspicious stars’….?” As so often in that better-read age, Churchill didn’t bother to cite the source, assuming most of his readers would know the source.

Read More Read More

Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat & Gears (3): Humber…

25 October 2023 Comments 2 Comments

Churchill’s staff remembered the sense of urgency so characteristic of the man. In the old Humber, “Murray, the detective, would sit at [the chauffeur’s] side, quietly murmuring, ‘slow down here’ or ‘pull in to the left a little more,’” wrote Roy Howells, a male nurse. “At the back Sir Winston would be…tapping on the glass partition and calling out, ‘Go on!’ Whenever he felt Bullock was slow in overtaking he would lean forward and bellow, ‘Now!’ It does Bullock great credit that he never really took the chances his passenger would have liked….”

Read More Read More

Squandermania: Churchill on Debt Limits

15 September 2023 Comments 1 Comment

"The detailed methods of [Squandermania] have not yet been fully thought out, but we are assured on the highest authority that if only enough resource and energy are used there will be no difficulty in getting rid of the stuff. This is the policy which used to be stigmatised by as the policy of buying a biscuit early in the morning and walking about all day looking for a dog to give it to."

Read More Read More

Churchill, Leslie Howard, Vivien Leigh and “Gone With the Wind”

31 August 2023 Comments 0 Comments

Q: Did Churchill read Gone With the Wind?

“I am a longtime Gone With the Wind collector and researcher, and give presentations at GWtW events. I’ve also been the GWtW Answer Lady on several websites. Some asked: Did Churchill and Roosevelt read Gone With the Wind? It seems that FDR read quite a bit of the novel, but I couldn’t come up with anything about Churchill.

“I hope you don’t mind me tossing you this question. I assume that Churchill did see the film, as FDR did, on 26 December 1939, after it opened in Washington.…

Read More Read More

Churchill Quotations: Youth, Maturity, Principle, Regulations

20 August 2023 Comments 0 Comments

"What is the use of Parliament if it is not the place where true statements can be brought before the people? What is the use of sending Members to the House of Commons who say just the popular things of the moment, and merely endeavour to give satisfaction by cheering loudly every Ministerial platitude? If Parliamentary democracy is to survive, it will not be because the Constituencies return tame, docile, subservient Members, and try to stamp out every form of independent judgment."

Read More Read More

Visitor’s Guide to the REAL “Churchill’s London”

30 July 2023 Comments 1 Comment

"Cast your eye from the entrance on the War Rooms slightly to the right. You’ll see a doorway well above ground. To the right of that doorway you will see a set of six windows ending in a curved window at Storey’s Gate. Those are the actual rooms in which Winston Churchill slept and worked during the Second World War."

Read More Read More

“Since Thomas Jefferson Dined Alone”…. JFK, Winston Churchill

15 July 2023 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill's Jefferson: "He came from the Virginian frontier, the home of dour individualism and faith in common humanity, the nucleus of resistance to the centralising hierarchy of British rule. He was in touch with fashionable Left-Wing circles of political philosophy in England and Europe, and, like the French school of economists who went by the name of Physiocrats, he believed in a yeoman-farmer society. He feared an industrial proletariat as much as he disliked the principle of aristocracy. Industrial and capitalist development appalled him."

Read More Read More

Winston Churchill’s Favorite Newspapers

21 June 2023 Comments 0 Comments

“Is [the Prime Minister] aware that...the Iver Heath Conservative Party Association held a fete to raise money for party purposes to which it invited American Service baseball teams to participate for a ‘Winston Churchill’ trophy?” WSC: “I read in the Daily Worker some account of this. I had not, I agree, fully realised the political implications that might attach to the matter, and in so far as I have erred I express my regret. [If the situation were reversed] I hope we should all show an equal spirit of tolerance and good humour.”

Read More Read More

Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher: Two Meetings

20 May 2023 Comments 1 Comment

Margaret Thatcher's biographer and Churchill’s bodyguard each knew of one Churchill-Thatcher meeting but not the other. The story of their two encounters demonstrates Lady Thatcher’s lifelong respect, and Churchill’s words on the regulatory state could have been her own words, 30 years later. When it came to liberty, neither were for turning.

Read More Read More